At an airport, I saw two adjacent ads, "DENVER THANKS OUR MILITARY,"
then, "LIVE. EVERY TRACK. ALL SEASON LONG. NASCAR ON SPEED." No irony
was intended by this juxtaposition, but our troops are certainly killing
and dying to sustain our car infatuation. On television, coverage of
the Gulf of Mexico disaster is frequently interrupted by car
commercials. Our oil car habit is destroying this planet, but we cannot
wean ourselves from this addiction. We express ourselves through
automobiles, after all. Cars are us. In much of America, one rarely sees
bodies, only cars. Our land and cityscapes have been deformed for the
hurling, private steel box.

A flying car will soon be available
for $194,000. Its Italianate name, Terrafugia, translates to Fleeing
the Earth, so our Jetsons future is still on, many hope, even as more
Americans are sleeping in their cars, and many more are struggling to
fuel their lugubrious lemons. The Motor City, Detroit, has been in full
collapse mode for decades, to be slowly reincarnated as an urban
agrarian zone. Instead of the clanking of heavy machinery, one will soon
hear cockcrows among gunshots.

We will not flee this earth. On a
finite planet, growth is also finite, and we've already reached all
limits. There will be no economic recovery, because economic growth is
no longer possible. The cheapest labor has been found, and demand for
all resources, primarily oil, is outstripping supply. Nearly a billion
people are already starving, and a billion lack clean water. The average
Mozambican uses a gallon of water a day, less than a third of what you
and I flush down the toilet each time. By contrast, the average American
consumes 151 gallons of water daily.

We use more of everything.
With five percent of the world's population, we engorge on 24 percent
of its resources. Got a problem with that? If we can pay for it, we're
entitled, aren't we? But there's the problem. We're the world's biggest
debtor nation. We haven't been paying for squat. As a starving planet
looks on, we're like the biggest pig who refuses to leave the all day,
all night, all-you-can-eat buffet, with our moment of reckoning willed
and deferred to our distant progeny. It's a farce, really. As we
slobber, no one dares to nudge us from the trough because, well, we're
so well-armed. We'll kick your ass! Got a problem with that?

To
maintain our position as the biggest loser, we have troops in 130
countries. With the American attention span reduced to a nano second or
less, no real pretext is needed when we invade and occupy a sovereign
nation. Why are we still in Afghanistan? It's not to catch Bin Laden,
that's for sure. His name hasn't been mentioned with any urgency for
years. Though blamed for two bankrupting wars, he was invisible during
our last presidential election. The
Washington Post did reveal, however, that the CIA had made a
video of a fake Bin Laden sitting around the fire, talking about gay
sex. Though our spooks couldn't stop terrorists from boarding four
different planes on September 11, 2001, they were certainly creative, in
an Animal House sort of way.
Even if this video was never released, no one bothered to ask if those
tapes that had circulated were real. Who cares? Have you seen Britney's
latest outfit? Likewise, whenever anyone challenges any aspect of the
official version of 9/11, he's labeled as a kook, but why should we
trust Washington on anything, when it has proven, over and over again,
to be incapable of telling the truths?!

Our leaders are unctuous
crooks, and the country seems aimless. That's why your average American
just wants to be left alone, to resume his shopping spree when the
economy does revive. Else, anticipating the worst, he stocks up on ammo,
beans and tuna. What's missing is any collective purpose or vision.
With each man, woman and child hooked to his own ipod and laptop, we are
alienated and alone. Thus, Gary Faulkner, armed with just a sword,
knife and Chicom pistol, headed to Pakistan to capture Bin Laden. He
took baby Bush's promise to "smoke him out" at face value, not knowing
that this threat was no more real than O.J.'s vow to capture Nicole's
"real killer."

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Though many still don't know it yet, we are a
poor nation. As this Mother of all Depressions becomes more undeniable,
Americans will have no choice but to endure, tolerate and, yes, even
enjoy and appreciate each other on a much more intimate level. Our towns
and cities will become more compact, and each home will have to
accommodate more bodies, from returning adult children to close, then
distant relatives, to boarders. More Americans will have to share their
kitchen and bathrooms with strangers. Bedrooms will be partitioned.
Destitution and proximity will breed conflicts, certainly, but they will
also force people to cooperate and compromise. We will become dirtier,
even bloodier, but at least we will have real lives, and not virtual
ones spent in front of a screen while we stuff our faces with endless
poison.

The creators of the Jetsons also brought us the
Flintstones, likely a more accurate portrayal of our future, but in that
cartoon, there is also the personal automobile. Spoiled by a century of
cheap oil, the American mind seems incapable of imagining life without a
nice set of wheels at its center. Made of stones and sticks, Fred's
appears to run on nothing. We won't be so lucky.

As the oil age
recedes in the mind's rear view mirror, science fiction will become a
genre about the past. Pondering those who needed machines to do just
about everything, from brushing their teeth, to writing, to self
pleasure, future readers will be amused, disgusted and only seldomly
envious. Imagine a world where music was a nuisance because it had
become repetitive and could not be silenced! Imagine people who could
barely walk, yet flew!

Linh Dinh is tracking our deteriorating social scape through his frequently updated photo blog, Postcards from the End of America . He is the author of two books of stories, five of poems, and a just released novel, (more...)